95
Monday, October 16 – 12:16 P.M.
Jake parked his Chevelle in the only space available near the Cumberland Farms convenience store outside Logan Airport in Chelsea. It felt good to be back in the saddle, the smell of the city wafting up around him. For a city boy, nothing compared to good old-fashioned taxi exhaust choking your sinuses after a few weeks in the country.
He walked up a grassy knoll incline strewn with garbage off to the side of the road. When he reached the summit, he turned and took in what was the best view of Orient Heights, East Boston, the highest point in the city. Jake liked it here. Save for the roar of the jets taking off from Logan, the atmosphere comforted him. He loved looking out at the well-settled, hardworking community of blue-collar Bostonians and the backdrop of downtown’s saw-toothed skyline.
Home
.
Fifty yards ahead, Jake stood on the concrete patio inside the Madonna Queen Shrine. Off in the distance, he spied the man he had come to see.
“Thought I might find you here. Always was your favorite place in the city to say a rosary.”
Father John turned. Walked slow. Jake could tell it was not by choice or from old age. The man was in pain. This, after several weeks of healing.
“Nice to see you, Jake.” The tranquility in the priest’s voice was familiar.
On the street down below, a car honked. A man yelled something in Spanish to his wife, who leaned out of one of the three-decker windows. The squeal of a city bus’s brakes squelched them both out.
“Thought we might have lost you there, Father.” Jake hadn’t seen Father John since he was air-lifted with a punctured lung from the Museum of Science that afternoon. The Boston diocese sent Father John to one of its hospitals in Canada specializing in heart and lung surgery. The knife entered his chest cavity, just missing his aorta. Rupturing a main vessel, however, the priest had endured two heart attacks in the weeks following the incident and needed an operation to get him back on his feet.
“Never, Jake.” They hugged. The priest stepped back for a minute and stared at the cop. “Let me just look at you.”
Sea gulls from a nearby landfill squawked their whiney cries overhead.
“Glad you’re on the mend, Father. Nice to see you up and around. Sorry I didn’t make a visit.”
“No need to apologize. You had your hands full with Dawn, Jake. How is she?”
“She’ll be okay. The wounds went deep. Strong girl. Never thought she had it in her to even consider the idea. She’s ansty to get back to work.”
Father John squeezed his rosary, looked up into the sky. “Thank God above.”
“Father, without your instinct—”
“No, no, no.”
They walked, taking in the shrine, its piety, the unspoken sacredness between them while standing in such a divine place.
“The papers get it right, Jake? I never heard how.”
Jake dropped his head. Stared at the Virgin Mary before him. “Yeah.” Then, looking down at the concrete, fiddling with his sunglasses, he had no idea why, but Jake Sundance Cooper lied to his priest. “He came at me and I shot him. That’s about it.” He had written the same thing in his report.
“You taking some more time off, or …?”
This was the burning question. Jake wasn’t sure himself. “Being a cop, Father, it’s like you’re in the mob. Once you’re in, you’re in. There’s very little faith left in justice. Besides, I am thinking about taking my investigative skills and putting them together with my writing skills and taking on a new career.”
“We have Dennis LeHane and Robert Parker already, Jake.”
“Yeah, I wasn’t
quite
thinking along those lines.” Jake smiled.
“Well,” Father John said, unsure if Jake was joking, grabbing him by the shoulder and squeezing, “regardless what you do, I need to remind you that faith is a funny thing, isn’t it? We all have faith in something.” They looked up at the immense statue of the Madonna Queen. “The belief of Don Orione here, the great man who erected this fine structure, was that beside every work of charity lies a work of faith.”
Jake nodded.
“Abide with me, Jake,” Father John concluded. “There is hope for the hopeless.”
Enjoy These Nonfiction Titles by M. William Phelps
Perfect Poison
Lethal Guardian
Every Move You Make
Sleep in Heavenly Peace
Because You Loved Me
If Looks Could Kill
I’ll Be Watching You
Deadly Secrets
Cruel Death
Death Trap
Failures of the Presidents (co-author)
Nathan Hale: The Life and Death of America’s First Spy
The Devil’s Rooming House: The True Story of America’s Deadliest Female Serial Killer
Kill For Me
Too Young to Kill
Never See Them Again
Kiss of the She-Devil
The Devil’s Right Hand
About the Author
Serial killer, crime expert and investigative journalist M. William Phelps spent ten years driving in, out and around metro Boston as a courier, where he met lots of cops and criminals, and discovered how the underbelly of Bean Town works. Since those days, Phelps has become the award-winning author of 20 nonfiction books. Winner of the 2008 New England Book Festival Award for
I’ll Be Watching You, has appeared on Court TV, The Discovery Channel, Fox News Channel, CN8, CBS’ “Early Show,” ABC’s “Good Morning America,” The Learning Channel, Biography Channel, History Channel, Montel Williams, Investigative Discovery, Geraldo At Large, USA Radio Network, Catholic Radio, ABC News Radio and Radio America.
Profiled in such noted publications as
Writer's Digest, NY Daily News, Newsday, Albany Times-Union, Hartford Courant and NY Post
, Phelps has also consulted for the Showtime cable television series “Dexter.” In 2012, a weekly series Phelps created and stars in, “Dark Minds,” premiered on Investigation Discovery. The show focuses on a fundamental obsession Phelps has with hunting (and catching) serial killers.
Phelps, whose sister-in-law, five months pregnant, was murdered in 1996, lives in a small Connecticut farming community near the Massachusetts border. A member of the Mystery Writers of America and International Thriller Writers, he can be reached at his author website,
www.mwilliamphelps.com